24-carat pink diamond carries a CHF 15 million high estimate
Christie's puts the emerald-cut, fancy-intense-pink, type IIa stone in its Geneva Magnificent Jewels sale on 10 November. Bulgari set it in a ring in the 1950s for a noble family that has held it since.
By The Auctions Desk
What changed
Christie's priced a pink. Christie's has estimated a 24-carat emerald-cut fancy intense pink diamond at CHF 10 million to CHF 15 million. Bulgari set it as a ring in the 1950s.
What it means
- If you bid colour: The band is 50% wide on a single stone. That is the house saying it does not know where this clears.
- If you hold pink inventory: A type IIa fancy intense pink of this size trading in public sets a visible comparable for everything below it.
- If you consign: A Bulgari setting and one noble family since the 1950s is the part of this lot nobody can replicate.
- What this is not: A result, or an independently documented provenance. The India story is family lore relayed by the auction house, the estimate is a pre-sale opinion, and no reserve has been published.
Key figures
| Estimate, 24-carat pink diamondgiven as $12m to $18m | CHF 10-15m |
|---|---|
| Weight, emerald-cut stonefancy intense pink, type IIa | 24 ct |
| High estimate a caratCC division, 15,000,000/24 | CHF 625,000 |
| Magnificent Jewels, Genevaviewing 5 to 10 November | 10 Nov |
Source: Estimate as published by Christie's on Friday 9 October 2026 for a sale on 10 November 2026
Ten to fifteen million
Fifty percent wide. Christie's estimate runs CHF 10 million to CHF 15 million. The high is one and a half times the low, a band the house has left deliberately open.
Twelve to eighteen. Christie's gives the same band as $12 million to $18 million. The stone is emerald-cut, graded fancy intense pink, and type IIa.
| Stone | Sale | Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| 24 ct emerald-cut, fancy intense pink, type IIa, Bulgari ring | Magnificent Jewels, 10 Nov | CHF 10m-15m ($12m-$18m) |
| 14.63 ct emerald-cut, orangey-pink, VVS1, David Morris ring | A Connoisseur's Collection Part I, 10 Nov | up to CHF 2.1m ($2.5m) |
| Per carat, high estimate, 24 ct stone | CC division | CHF 625,000 |
| Per carat, low estimate, 24 ct stone | CC division | CHF 416,667 |
The two stones are different weights, colours, clarities, consignments and catalogues, and are listed together only because both fall on 10 November in Geneva. The per-carat rows are Carat Capital's own division and assume the catalogued 24-carat weight is exact rather than rounded: 15,000,000/24 and 10,000,000/24. Christie's has published neither a per-carat estimate nor a weight to two decimal places.
A ring from the 1950s
Bulgari set it. Bulgari mounted the diamond as a ring in the 1950s. The house has stayed in one noble family since acquisition, according to Christie's.
Family lore, not record. Christie's attributes the India origin to family lore from that household. It is the owner's account relayed by the auction house, not a documented chain.
Two pinks, same day
A second stone. Carat Capital reported on 15 September that Christie's estimated a 14.63-carat David Morris pink ring at up to CHF 2.1 million.
Different catalogues. That ring leads a 123-lot single-owner sale. The Bulgari stone sits in Magnificent Jewels. Two separate consignments, two separate books.
What to watch
- 5 to 10 November 2026Public viewing at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues in Geneva, the first chance for the trade to see the stone.
- 10 November 2026Whether the ring clears CHF 10 million, and where inside the CHF 5 million band it lands.
- 10 November 2026The David Morris pink in the single-owner sale on the same day, as a second read on pink demand.
The story so far
Go deeper
What would change this call
A withdrawal before the sale, or a result at or below the low estimate, which would make this a story about one house's pricing ambition rather than about pink demand. A pre-sale estimate is an opinion that has not been tested by a bidder.
What a 50% estimate band tells you
An auction estimate is the house's published opinion of where a lot should clear, and its width is information. A narrow band is a claim to know the market; a band whose high is one and a half times its low is a claim that the market for this object is thin enough that two serious bidders could land far apart. For large fancy-colour diamonds the comparable set is a handful of stones over a span of years, so the estimate is set from few data points and the reserve, which is confidential and usually at or below the low estimate, does the real work. Buyer's premium sits on top of the hammer price, so the price a buyer pays is above any figure quoted here. Per-carat arithmetic on a rounded catalogue weight is indicative only: at 23.5 carats the high estimate would be CHF 638,298 a carat and at 24.5 it would be CHF 612,245.
Method
Rapaport's report was fetched to raw bytes with a browser identity, HTTP 200, 218,937 bytes, saved to newsroom/sources/2026-10-09/bulgari.html, and figures were read out of the article's own body paragraphs rather than from a whole-page sweep, because the page carries recirculation rails whose figures belong to other stories. Raw-byte grep counts stated: '24-carat' 6 hits, 'CHF 10 million' 1, 'CHF 15 million' 1, '$12 million' 4, '$18 million' 4, 'type IIa' 1, 'November 10' 1, 'November 5' 1. The dollar figures appear more than once because the page repeats them in its own metadata and headline; the body occurrence is the one quoted. The per-carat figures are Carat Capital's own division and are printed with their terms. Archive check, searched in website/content/articles.json, the archive of record: 'Autumn Luxury Week' 0 hits; 'Hollywood on the Tiber' 0; 'Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues' 0; 'CHF 15' 0; '24-carat pink' 0. 'fancy intense pink' 2 hits, both opened and read: blue-is-the-color-of-money of 11 July 2026 and sothebys-thirty-one-million of 24 July 2026, both covering New York summer sales and different stones. 'Magnificent Jewels' 2 hits in 1 article, opened: blue-is-the-color-of-money, covering Christie's New York June sale. 'Bulgari' 16 hits across 11 articles, all listed and read by date and title; the nearest, bulgari-sapphire-nine-five-million of 11 September 2026, is a sapphire ring in Hong Kong. PERIOD AND EVENT NAMED ON BOTH SIDES: ours 2026-09-15 covers the 14.63-carat David Morris orangey-pink ring in Christie's single-owner Connoisseur's Collection sale | this item covers a 24-carat Bulgari-set fancy intense pink in Christie's Magnificent Jewels sale - SAME HOUSE, SAME DATE, DIFFERENT STONE, DIFFERENT CATALOGUE, so NEW, not a repeat. The David Morris sale itself was correctly killed as already covered and is cited here as prior coverage instead.